


learning to walk

by peaktotheocean



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: A tiny mention of blood as a result of mean baby dragons, Ankh-Morpork, Book: The Fifth Elephant, Does that tag count if he's shifting to human for the first time?, F/M, First Time Shifting, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Multi, OT3, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:21:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29091204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peaktotheocean/pseuds/peaktotheocean
Summary: Angua should have known when she realized Carrot could recognize Gavin's howl out of the dozens of other wolves around them.
Relationships: Gavin (Discworld)/Carrot Ironfoundersson/Angua von Uberwald
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	learning to walk

**Author's Note:**

> I think a lot about that part of the Fifth Elephant that talks about how Gavin might have had a werewolf back in the line of his ancestors. This fic comes from that idea  
> \---  
> Big thank you to Linds for looking this over  
> \---  
> When something is italicized that isn’t a thought or emphasis from a character, it is an excerpt right from the Fifth Elephant which I did not write and have no legal claim to

_“He sounds like a very bright wolf,” said Vimes, in the absence of anything more diplomatic to say._

_“More than that. Angua thinks he might be part werewolf, from way back.”_

-excerpt from The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett  


\-----------------------------------------------

  
Anyone who had only read about Ankh-Morpork before visiting the city would have probably assumed that the first thing seen upon nearing the capital would be the Tower of Art at Unseen University. Angua herself had thought this before coming to join the Watch. Carrot hadn't, only because it was never high on a dwarf's list of priorities to think that, well, _high_.

In any sense, the assumption was incorrect. The first visible trace of Ankh-Morpork was a color of stink that was the pride of the city and the bane of Angua's nose. She still wasn't sure how Gavin had managed when he had come to find her. 

Or how he was going to manage now.

The trio's speed of travel slowed as they got closer to the gates of Ankh-Morpork. They hadn't dropped to a leisurely pace because of their exhaustion-- they had been doing fairly well with rations and pace. Rather it was because of the fact that they were still a trio.

Gavin had followed them— well no, he had been traveling _with_ them ever since they had left Überwald. The pack had kept on running and Gavin had firmly sat himself down between Angua and Carrot. And when neither of them objected, Carrot had just packed a squat bowl for Gavin to use for drinking water.

Angua hadn’t said “there’s snow around for miles, he drinks the stuff frozen” nor had she snapped that “wolves don’t use dog bowls.” She couldn't. 

She had come so close to losing both of them that she was content to have them do what they liked so long as it didn't consist of hurting one another. Which hadn't appeared to be an inkling in either of their brains. 

_It hadn't ever_ , she thought, her mind thinking back to that cold night. And the rest of the time in Überwald when they had been together, still cold. Angua should have known when she realized Carrot could recognize Gavin's howl out of the dozens of other wolves around them.

_"Gavin is quite unusual."_

_"I'm sure we'll be friends."_

It was as though the two of them had a silent agreed-upon secret that Angua hadn’t been privy to. 

A single whine drew her attention. The noise somehow was louder than all the commotion coming from over the walls of the city. None of them were as important as this. 

Angua was sure that if Carrot thought it would do anything, he'd be whining at her as well. Instead, he used his words.

"Can you share the dog bed or is that a territory thing?" His voice was innocent enough but Angua knew better. He already had a plan in place. Carrot had probably started rearranging their room the second he had met Gavin.

“Wolves can’t live in the city," she reminded him. Angua refused to pretend that this was already a done deal. She couldn't. "They’d go mad. It’s a miracle he managed the first time around.”

“You said wolves don’t have names either.” Carrot’s low voice just repeating what had already been floating around Angua’s head. 

“He still doesn’t. He’s just called Gavin.” 

The wolf’s ears pricked up at the moniker but Angua didn’t acknowledge it. She didn’t take her eyes off of Carrot.

"We can't just leave him here."

" _We_ are not leaving _him_ anywhere. He's his own wolf."

Gavin, just as he had done back in woods, sat between the two of them, letting his head swing back and forth. These were words he knew and he was paying close attention.

"He wouldn't have followed us all the way back here just to leave us again," Carrot said, quiet and slow again, making sure Gavin could understand him as well as Angua. 

She knew he was right. She wished it hadn't needed to be said aloud but Angua knew enough about herself to know she needed the reassurance. From both of them. Well, Carrot had followed her halfway across the Disc and Gavin had...okay, maybe she didn't need their audible affirmation. 

It felt good to have it though, certainly. The reminder certainly hadn't hurt.

Not that she'd say _that_ out loud.

"The city doesn't smell any better as a human," Angua warned him. Gavin didn't lick her hand, _he wouldn't_ , she didn't think. But he did trot over and nuzzle against her open palm.

"Do you really think he can? Turn human, I mean."

Angua thought about her brother, the sheep dog, and her poor sister. How sometimes the children of werewolves could become monsters. Sometimes they managed that regardless of an ability to change. 

_And sometimes_ , she looked over at Gavin, _the lineage leads to very smart wolves_.

"I don't think he would have followed us back here if he didn't think there was a chance," Angua said, more honestly than she had wanted to. She did that a lot when faced with Carrot's openly earnest tone.

Carrot's responding smile was wide to the near point of breakage and she was grateful it wasn't on her for too long. The force of his expressions could be exhausting some times. Angua wagered that Gavin was going to find that out sooner rather than later.

“He can’t go back there. Not after coming to get me and almost being killed by Wulfgang.” She thought about the pack, how Carrot had fought them off while Gavin was being tended to by Lady Sybil and Igor back at the embassy. 

He could have taken those other wolves again after his recovery. He could have even gone back to his old pack. But he hadn't. They had gotten back and Gavin was resting, calm as anything next to Lady Sybil who had all the grace not to mention that the embassy's new rugs were covered in muddy slush.

If there was anyone more qualified to handled a wounded wolf besides Angua herself, she couldn't think of one better than Lady Sybil. If Gavin couldn't turn human, she reckoned there would be at least one dragon sanctuary that would employ a wolf for security. He'd have space there too and--

No, Angua couldn't think like that. If he was insisting on coming with them, then there must be a reason. Something inside Gavin that told him he could do it. 

Maybe he had discovered that little light switch.

"And anyway, wolves don't look back." She motioned to walk through the gate and both of them followed her. "We'll try him out during a new moon first. That'd be the easiest. With the pull, at least." Angua tried to remember what other variables made her want to turn human and stay that way. Besides the moon and well, Carrot, of course. 

Carrot was still grinning at Gavin who was, in turn, trying to copy the expression even as a wolf. His long tongue lolled out and although no one would mistake him for a common Morporkian stray, it certainly did manage to alter his appearance some. 

"What do you think he'll look like?" Carrot murmured. "I'm excited to meet him, you know, as a human."

"I think he's going to be taller than you," Angua told him with just a hint of a leer in order to get Carrot's cheeks to tinge pink.

"You don't think he'll get into fight with some of the street dogs, do you? Gaspode said they're a nasty bunch."

"Carrot, he's a wolf. Besides, he can pay dues to the guild just like I do if it's that big of an issue. I doubt any of them would want to bother with him."

"The _guild?_ "

Angua ignored him. "Besides, he smells like me and you and they already know not to mess with me."

" _Guild_ ," Carrot said again, to himself this time.

"You're both _mine_." Carrot saw a flash of Angua's teeth. Gavin grumbled beside her. "And Gavin saved you. You're his too." 

Gavin emphasized this by moving a little closer to Carrot and nudging his hand with his nose, as he had done to Angua earlier. Angua would bet her bed that Carrot's mixture of scents were going to be heavy on wolf over the next few months.

"And you're both mine?" Carrot asked. His tone came off confused though she was sure he intended for it to be hopeful.

"You're not a wolf," Angua reminded him. It didn't take her long to relent. The two of them made such identical expressions at her that she had to tamp down on the satisfaction in her chest that she'd be seeing them a lot more. "Fine. We're yours too. He's still not joining the Watch though. Our patrols are hectic enough."

\-----------------------------------------------

Angua had been right about one thing. 

Gavin was taller than Carrot.

Or at least he would be once he figured out how to walk around on two legs. 

She didn't envy him that. If she had stopped to think about balancing every time she shifted, Angua was sure it would be a lesson in humility. 

At the moment Gavin was scrunched up on Carrot's bed. Well, their bed now, really. His knees were pulled up to his chest and his hands kept alternating between tight fists and stretching his fingers out as far as they would go. 

“Gavin? Is everything all right?” Carrot asked, doing a masterful job of keeping himself a few feet back from the bed. His arms were wrapped around his own torso as though he was stopping himself from moving forward before Angua and Gavin gave an all clear sign.

Gradually, the squeezing of his limbs eased, with his fingers relaxing against his legs and his knees starting to wobble. The tension in the room had come down but only by about 30 percent. Carrot still hadn't moved and Angua didn't want to speak. 

She remembered what it felt like it because it was the same every time. Adjusting to the unsophisticated human senses that couldn't filter worth a damn. Her adding to the noise wouldn't help though she had a feeling she knew about the more important issue.

Gavin's eyes were still screwed shut. 

“It’s the colors. There’s too many of them.”

Carrot looked around as though perhaps maybe Angua was telling a joke. Ankh-Morpork was a colorful city, to be sure, but not necessarily in the literal sense. Certainly not in the small room they currently occupied. 

"Trust me, to a dog, this room and city might as well be covered in neon rainbows." Muddy rainbows perhaps but still more than Gavin had ever potentially imagined. 

"Well then, he doesn't have to open his eyes tonight," Carrot decided. Gavin's head tilted at the sound of Carrot's voice. HIs hands came down were they had still been wrapped around his legs and started rubbing at the blanket underneath of him. At his slow inhale, Angua could hear his heart come down to a less-alarming rhythm. "This was step one, right? How about we head to sleep and tomorrow we'll work on colors."

No longer waiting, Carrot reached out his hand. He did it slow enough that he trusted Gavin to growl or Angua to wave him off but neither happened. Holding on tightly to Carrot's hand, Gavin's heart rate slowed again, settling into a familiar rhythm. 

"Tomorrow colors," Angua agreed. She didn't bother to hold back her smile. It would have been a futile effort in the face of Carrot's pleased expression as he stared at their hands joined together. "The day after next: balance." 

Carrot held his other hand out to her and Angua took it. She climbed onto the bed on Gavin's other side and braced her shoulder against his the way they had done in wolf form. When that didn't get a response, she used her free hand to pry his off of where it was clutching the knit blanket. He was gripping her a little bit tighter than Carrot. Even when stressed, Gavin still had it in his mind not to harm their dwarf. 

\-----------------------------------------------

It turned out that they were able to work on balance and taste during the same day. Only because they were using sweet pastries to convince a grumbling Gavin to attempt to walk across the room but Angua still counted it as a victory.

\-----------------------------------------------

Angua never had an issue not working the same shifts as Carrot but it was different when she was patrolling the city and she knew he was back in their room with Gavin. She wasn't worried about the two of them together. She hadn't really been since their first night together in the mountains. And it wasn't about missing anything important in his human milestones either. It had been weeks and Gavin had mostly gotten the hang of five senses and two legs. 

It was more about just missing them full stop.

Her relationship with Carrot had always been just that: a partnership that may or may not have gone further depending on Angua's flight or fight and Carrot's following her. But now with the three of them, it felt more cohesive. She hesitated to say like a pack because Carrot was a dwarf but up until three months ago, Gavin had just been a wolf. 

The two of them were curled up around each other on the bed, Carrot behind Gavin, both of them on their sides. What she hadn’t expected was Gavin back in wolf form. He had been earnestly adamant in his few words about staying human all day. Or at least trying to. 

Two pairs of half-closed eyes peered up from the bed as Angua did her best to quietly close the bedroom door behind her. One of the sets of eyes was distinctly more canine than the other and once they saw her [Angua, pack, not a threat], Gavin shut them again and sighed, nosing back into the blankets in front of him.

He had gotten the earnestness from Carrot. It was different from being a wolf. Sure Gavin had the same soul, instincts, and was the same fearsome sight that had saved Angua more than once. But wolves didn’t have to hide their expressions. They only had a few of them and the main ones mostly revolved around whether or not their teeth were bared.

Humans though, the muscles in their face worked against them. Angua couldn’t have guessed that Gavin the Human would have needed to be taught how to not bloody wear his heart on his borrowed-from-Carrot-and-a-little-too-short-for-him sleeves. 

Of course Carrot didn’t see anything wrong with it. Why would he? Dwarves were in the dark or had their faces covered in by beards. He had never learned either. It hadn’t been a detriment to him yet, that he knew of. Plenty of other, more important things to worry about it. 

Angua, against her initial instincts and worry, found herself agreeing. Especially when she would get back to their shared room, small as it was, and had two humans smiling abashedly at her, wide as could be, as if she was the best thing they’d seen all day. Usually that was the case anyway.

"Everything all right?” She asked quietly, not wanting to overwhelm Gavin's senses if that was the issue.

Carrot shifted his hand to pet along Gavin's side. "Just a long day. I think Lady Sybil had one too many prospective adoptees by."

"Ah."

"He made it until he got back home though." Carrot gestured to the pile of clothing that was folded on the top of the dresser. Angua could make an easy bet that Carrot had been the one responsible for that. 

It wasn't that Gavin disliked clothes, in fact, he loved some of the thick sweaters Lady Sybil had knitted for Vimes that the commander never wore. But the keeping order of the clothes was another story. 

Carrot didn't mind picking up the slack though. He said it was the least he could do considering the overload Gavin was dealing with when the issue normally occurred. Angua knew it was mostly just because Carrot liked taking care of them. That was okay too, she kept reminding herself. 

As it turned out, Angua's original idea of Gavin working at Lady Sybil's dragon pens hadn't been the worst. 

He couldn't be in the Watch. His instincts were too strong for that. But whether as human or wolf, he was perfect for taking care of dragons. Not to mention Lady Sybil jumped at the idea of employing someone who was a _friend_ of Angua and Carrot as well as practically indestructible. Him appreciating her knitted wares didn't hurt either, especially since they worked with dragons. A day that ended with a pile of ashes that used to be a sweater just meant Lady Sybil would happily make him another one.

She never even made a peep when, some days, he showed up as a wolf as opposed to a human. Even if the chickens got a little disgruntled, certainly the dragons enjoyed having a playmate that they could climb all over. It was a little confusing for them seeing as Gavin the wolf and Gavin the human both smelled the same and only one of them bit back. 

Well, most of the time.

Over the first few weeks of dropping Gavin off every morning, Lady Sybil would pull Angua aside to check on some custom or another. It took quite a lot of convincing for her to understand putting a large rump of meat into a bowl was actually more offensive than just leaving it on the ground where he had left his clothes. A plate, perhaps, but certainly not a dog bowl. 

"I thought Carrot had mentioned something about uhh a basket," Lady Sybil said delicately.

"For sleeping in, yes. Curling up." Angua thought about her basket. She still used it sometimes. Not too often though anymore. Not when her other two mates were on the bed. 

Gavin had never wanted one though. He had taken one look at the large bed and hopped up next to Carrot who, in turn, at beamed at Angua. No need for a basket there then, regardless of whatever form he was in. 

With anyone else, even on occasion, Carrot, Angua would have bristled an answering personal questions. There was something about the way Lady Sybil asked. She wasn’t just being respectful or curious. She was just a boss who wanted to do right by her employee who didn’t really make a habit of speaking to her or anyone else. Not in so many words at least.

That was why, when Lady Sybil’s curiosity did make an appearance, Angua settled herself and remembered all she had done for them, for him. From playing nursemaid back in Überwald to agreeing immediately to employ Gavin even though her husband looked bewildered at the idea. 

"So you’ve never seen him as a human before he came back with you and Carrot?”

“Never,” Angua answered. She thought about the conversations she and Gavin had muddled through when they were both in wolf forms. It was fine for her, for both of them. They never had an issue. 

But then Gavin met Carrot. And Carrot couldn’t turn into a wolf. 

So if Carrot couldn’t come down to Gavin’s level, Gavin was going to find that switch in his DNA from his ancestor long ago and come up to his.

Not that he needed to. Carrot seemed happy with Gavin in either form. Angua wasn’t sure why she had expected otherwise. He had never said anything about her wolf one way or the other. Perhaps it was seeing it directed towards another person was the reminder that it wasn’t a fluke, it was just Carrot. 

It wasn’t the first time she had found them like this, curled up together on the bed. But the previous time had been a little more perilous.

She had come back their room, speeding up as she recognized the scent of Gavin’s blood.

But when the door was open, there was no urgency or worry, just the remnants of blood which had already been wiped away by Carrot. Gavin had a long scratch on his stomach and was laying on his side so Carrot could tend to it.

Well, _tend to it_ was maybe too strong. It looked as though it had nearly healed already and was near a week old.

Shifting her attention back, Angua nodded towards Gavin's form. She was almost certain he was a minute or two away from sleep just from the exhaustion rolling off of him. "What happened here?"

Carrot didn’t stop his work. Once he had his bandages out, he was a textbook nurse and couldn’t be persuaded away. “One of the larger dragons got a little rough with him today." 

"Carrot," Angua said before suddenly stopping, debating how to word what she wanted to say next. In the end, she decided it was best to just say it rather than let it simmer under her skin until she ended up barking it at Carrot a few hours or even days later. "He's a werewolf. He's probably healed by now. He doesn't need all this." Angua gestured to the space next to Carrot on the bed that was filled with first aid supplies.

Carrot kept two first aid tins at their lodgings, one for dwarves and humans and one for wolves. The wolf one rarely got used but today there was a damp towel, a few rolled bandages, and some kind of salve that looked as though it ought to smell disgusting but since it didn't, it compensated by looking as though someone had sneezed into pie filling.

Angua tried not to think of the fact that Carrot probably paid a good amount of his wages to ensure that the ointment didn't smell like anything. She could just imagine him talking to a local apothecary worker about how his _friends_ had sensitive noises.

“Everyone deserves to be taken care of.”

And well, what could she say to that?

She said nothing but instead, began to get undressed. She folded her uniform into a neat pile next to Carrot’s and placed the helmet on top.

Within seconds, she was on Carrot’s other side, her furry head in his lap right next to Gavin’s, with their muzzles parallel.

“I have two hands,” Carrot whispered with pride, using them to stroke both of his companions. 

Angua thought about that as she let herself be soothed to sleep. She shifted the paw nearest to Gavin so it was barely touching his as well. There was a little twitch of surprise but it didn't move away, it settled against her. She drifted off after that, with Carrot under the two of large wolves and Gavin safe and whole right next to her. 

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't give Gavin any human characterization because it didn't feel right as Pratchett had only written wolf Gavin. I think the story still works without those specifics though since it's mainly from Angua's POV anyway. Hope you enjoyed it


End file.
